Grief Digest Articles

When my parents died in 2002, within two weeks of each other, my sisters and I received advice from bereavement counselors and others who had suffered family loss. We were cautioned not to make any sudden changes in our lives. Often, we were advised to maintain as much of a status quo as possible for the first year following their deaths.None of us had ever been very successful at living according to the conventional wisdom, but floundering in the sea of grief, one clings desperately to any life …

I’m going to start backwards. Not that I’m healed, far from it, but it only seems logical to take my life now as a given, or at least as a reality, and reflect on what I’ve gone through over the past five years. Ken died suddenly of a rare and painful cancer. We had been happily married for about thirty years; we had three grown children, now all married. To say I was devastated would be an understatement.Efforts to rebuild my life were aided by friends, support groups, and therapy, not necessar …

The time passed since my son’s death, has been one year, 3 months, and 16 days. There is still a deep ache in my chest, a chronic longing that I know can never be filled. I hurt in a way that only another parent who has lost a child can understand. I am not being unfair to those who have incurred other losses, because their pain is also great, but when it is the child who you carried in your body for nine months, or the child you lovingly chose when you made the monumental decision to adopt, the …

By Thom Dennis, LCPCAntiques Roadshow is one of my favorite television programs. Viewers watch as antique appraisers travel across the country and spend the day evaluating the trash and treasures that people bring to them. Admittedly, this program does not offer much in the way of gut-busting comedy or high drama, but it does offer one thing: the possibility that you could be rich and not even know it. On the show, it is a regular occurrence for someone to find out that the old lamp they found i …

Ten Steps to Reducing TensionBy Nancy WeilIt sneaks up on us at the most unexpected times. It doesn’t take much to send us there: an inappropriate comment from someone, too much to do and no energy to do it or a sudden flood of emotions welling up. Your day is going smoothly and suddenly, when one thing throws you a curve ball, you begin to feel yourself getting tense. The stress begins to build and your mind begins to look for ways to get out and lay on a beach somewhere. While thoughts of Tahi …